


It’s not Christmas if I can’t have you

by phrynne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Special, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Getting Back Together, Kissing, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Out, Minor Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson, Mutual Pining, Not Epilogue Compliant, POV Draco Malfoy, POV Second Person, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 04:16:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrynne/pseuds/phrynne
Summary: When Christmas comes, you’re to be found in Potter’s kitchen, holding a glass of Port wine, thinking life is a very strange thing.





	It’s not Christmas if I can’t have you

**Author's Note:**

> Hey :) I missed them and so I wrote this for Christmas, but it's kinda coming late.  
> Anyway, my friend says Christmas is on until january 6th, so. Enjoy.

When Christmas comes, you’re to be found in Potter’s kitchen, holding a glass of Port wine, thinking life is a very strange thing. 

Far away in the house, you hear the last laughs from Granger, then the old door is shut and you know it’s happening. That thing you said couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t. You tried to leave a dozen times already, but midway through putting your coat on, someone has dragged you back in again. Somehow, those responsible for you staying later (otherwise known as your friends), have managed to leave. 

You shouldn't be here, you know this. You also shouldn’t be drinking this wine, a gift from Pansy, who has just left with her  _ life partner _ (you’re quoting), none other than Hermione Granger.  The wine tastes like heaven, if heaven is a place of warmth and dizziness. It makes your thoughts come unfiltered. You used to be so careful, even —  _ especially  _ — inside your own head, but now you’re too aware of the house becoming silent, of the tiny bright lights floating in the enchanted ceiling, of your own pale hand holding the glass, of the minutes ticking by — pointing towards the fact that you should be leaving. 

Only you can’t seem to. It’s hard to leave this house.  _ His  _ house, which weirdly enough is also sort of half  _ yours _ , since you’re half Black and your mother grew up here and maybe that’s why the house feels so right, except you know that’s  _ not really  _ the reason.  It’s Christmas, and the truth is you don’t want to go back to the Manor. Everything is dead in that house. You’ve been spending less and less time there, but you can’t bring yourself to abandon it, to sell it, to turn it into a War Remembrance Museum — a not half-bad suggestion from Granger (yes, you’re friends). You wonder if you’re still living there as a punishment. A way to keep the crimes of your family alive, a way to never forget how responsible you are. The house is a monstrous thing, the last testimony to the Malfoy’s legacy, your penance. You just can’t wash it clean, not like Potter did to this house, Grimmauld, it used to be the darkest, ugliest thing, but he turned into a real home, with proper curtains and pillows and plants and bread crumbs, everything a home should have and all of which is part yours, part all his friends and part Potter’s godson, Teddy, the cutest kid you ever met, who is also  _ your  _ cousin, go figure. You’ve never noticed it before. How your life and  _ his  _ are so entwined. 

You hear his footsteps in the corridor. You swore this wouldn’t happen. Not again. You should stop drinking, set your glass on the counter, pick up your coat, wish him Merry Christmas and floo to the Manor, but -

‘Hey.’

Potter is at the kitchen door, in his green sweater. 

Your thoughts scatter. 

You forget the wine. 

You’re alone with him again. Like last Christmas. It comes crashing down on you. A whole year between that night and this night, and your body tenses like an arrow. 

‘Can I have some?’ he asks. 

It’s the same question he made that last Christmas. You nod. Your hand trembles as you pull up another glass and serve him the wine. You fill your glass again. He’s walking over, you realise. He’s right there, next to you, and his arm brushes yours as he picks up his glass. It’s enough to send you back to that night, recollected in glimpses and blurs in your memory. 

The way you kissed the firewhisky off his mouth. The way you both fell down the couch to the floor and didn’t even notice. The way he straddled your lap and stayed there, his hands climbing beneath your clothes. That night you kissed Potter for so long you memorised his every moan, the soft burn of his stubble, the involuntary tremble of his body above yours. 

Life. It can crash your normal in the blink of an eye, throw you right into the middle of a different plot and go: hey, this your new life now. 

‘You’re very quiet.’ you say, even though you’re the one who’s quiet, who’s been quiet this night and for a full year, maybe your whole life. Always quiet about the things that did matter, and so loud on the things that didn’t. 

He shifts at your side, turns to face you. His silence unbalances you. You can’t look at him, so you drink your wine instead. 

‘I asked them to leave us alone.’ he says finally, but of course you already knew it. Your friends (and his) have indulged your avoidance of Potter for a whole year, it had to end. 

You know he’s looking at you now. He has this gift of making everything feel more alive than you can bear. It makes you quite afraid of breathing.  It’s weird to find yourself so close to someone, that you feel like you’ve known them your whole life and at the same time, you really don’t know them at all, they make you question everything, even when you’ve been through the weirdest shit, like a war and maniac living in your house and a ton of therapy along the way — and still. 

Here he stands. Harry James Potter. Probably the most known wizard of your lifetime and the biggest fucking mystery of your life. 

‘It’s a mistake.’ you whisper and you let the wine burn down your throat. 

You feel his eyes on you. He takes a long sip of his wine and sets the glass on the table. You brace yourself for the talk you should have had a year ago and didn’t.

‘ Do you regret what happened last Christmas?’ he asks quietly, but he’s not done yet. Your hands are shaking and you want to hide them. ‘Do you regret sleeping with me?’ he breathes out, the words tumbling in a confused rush out of his mouth. ‘Do you regret — fucking me, kissing me, those things you said — You said—’ he breaks off. 

All this time, you’ve been carrying it around with you, that heavy weight, the crimes of your father, the complicit guilt of your mother, that big hollow terrible house, it's all connected, its all for you to carry, you wonder how you go on carrying it, all the dead, all your crimes and that house, you wonder how you're not crushed under the sheer weight of it, how you managed to have something of a life of your own, how you got a proper job, you, whose whole life had been decided for you since birth, you — not becoming the man you were supposed to be, a pureblood heir in a proper pureblood marriage. Instead, you’re working a nine to five job, earning your pay, and when you’re not doing that you’re meeting Muggle men at pubs and letting them take you to their apartments, or blowing strangers in some dingy bathroom and drinking down their bitter taste with whisky but, most of all, you’re becoming friends with Potter and his lot, which is now your lot too. You — drinking coffee with Potter every other day, spending weekends at Grimmauld, taking Teddy to Quidditch games, you helping him rid the house of Dark Magic, you not questing any of these things, not questioning the way he looks at you, not questioning why he's in your head all the time, not questioning that night, last Christmas, that wonderful, crazy, starry night when he stopped laughing and you stopped breathing and then you were kissing and it was so messy, the way his hands were on you, under your sweater, the way his mouth tasted of sugar and spice and everything so nice, the way you both tumbled upstairs, even though it was such a bad idea, the worst, but none of you could stop. The way he lifted you up and carried you up another flight of stairs, the way you seemed to fit with each other, and you’d had other men but none of them, none of them was the right fit, not like this, not like — oh, you were out of your goddamned mind. The way you undressed for him, your hands cold and trembling and his eyes on you, the way you blamed it on the firewhisky and he did too, the way he tasted better than any drink, the way it was all so slow and awkward and then so right and so easy, the way he learned you, your body, the way he asked ‘can I’, ‘may I’, until you wanted to scream, his hands closing on your wrists, the right side of painful, the slow slide of him in you, your screams, Merlin, your screams, so shameless, so gone, and his face, wide-eyed, in awe of you, and the way he looked as he came, so alive and infinite, that morning when you woke up in his bed, the sun too bright, everything so real, so impossible, and you were so cold and got dressed and left without a word and the way you've been avoiding him, and everything about him, ever since, making yourself all the more miserable. You. There's something wrong with you. Something damaged, which is not at all surprising, which is why you're keeping away from Potter for he deserves so much better, so much more than you can give him and you wish you could regret that night and the things you did to him and let him do to you, but you don't. It's the only thing you have. 

You finally let yourself look at him. He starts, but doesn’t look away. He was never one to step back on anything, unlike you. He needs an answer, he deserves an answer more than anything, but all you are able to think now is — quite randomly — that he’s  the only other person to have used your wand and it sure as hell shouldn't feel this intimate, this right, maybe it's some sort of ancient magic, something very old, very powerful, that draws you to each other no matter your history, no matter a war, no matter all your fuck ups, no matter the fact that you ignored him for a year, or maybe, just maybe, it’s all in your head. 

You're sure it's all in your head. You've lived with so many things inside your head, you're sure you can live with this one too, if only —

‘Draco?’

‘What?’ your voice comes out clipped, harsher than you intended to. 

His eyes are way too close, his  _ everything  _ is way too close and you're too aware of the sharp, tight, distance between the both of you. You never knew it before, but it’s all in the distance between two people. That seemingly empty space tells you everything there is to know. You pretend to not notice what this distance between you and him means. What it has been meaning all along. 

‘Do you remember what you said to me that night?’ he asks, so quiet. 

You can’t lie to him, you realise. You can’t lie to him and that’s the reason you ran, so you wouldn’t have to. You can’t say you don’t remember, for you remember every word. The sudden clarity as you said it. It was after that first messy kiss. He was breathless, you were so hard and already lost. He asked: ‘Are you sure?’ And you said:

‘It’s not Christmas if I can’t have you.’

It sounds too loud, now, as you repeat it, filling in the space between the both of you.

Potter bites on his lip.  

‘Did you mean it?’ he asks. 

But he already knows you did. 

‘Did you mean it like… you only want me for Christmas? Because… I don’t think that’s what you meant. But then this whole year—’

Suddenly, you can’t quite bear it. You can’t bear to keep it inside of you, you can’t bear the thought of him thinking it was a one-off when all you did for a year was try to convince yourself that you don’t belong with him. 

‘You’re such a fool, Harry.’ you say quietly, and you sound so fond, so head over heels for him.  You’re not ready to tell him about your demons yet. You’re not ready to let him know he’s the best part of your days. But you need to let him know how wrong you are, how you can no longer deny the pull of the universe, bringing your lives together over and over again. 

‘But I’ve been the worst fool.’

It’s the most honest you can be. You hope he gets it.

And then he lifts you up, your legs wrap around him and it’s enough. 


End file.
